Kindred

Kindred by Octavia Butler

There are many wonderful things to think about Octavia Butler’s Kindred. There aren’t many negative ones. In fact, here is the only one I had: I didn’t find any intellectual progression in Rufus Weylin from the time he was a toddler until he was in his mid-twenties. He thought and spoke the same throughout the novel. That was fine when he was older, but read as out of place to me when he was a boy. Outside of that, Kindred was a well-thought out, thoroughly researched, and perfectly crafted novel.

This is the first Octavia Butler novel that I’ve read—I tried to read Parable of the Sower, but gave up after 3 or 4 chapters—but Kindred must be her masterpiece. She thought of everything (by everything, I mean she answered all of my “But what if?” and “But what about?” questions). As far as I’m concerned, this is the definitive modern day slave narrative.

Dana was the perfect protagonist for this type of story. She knows things, but isn’t an expert. She’s educated, but not extremely so. She has a sufficient quantity of self-esteem. She’s realistic in her expectations of herself. And, most importantly, she values herself. These qualities make the reader wonder why and how she could possible allow herself to fall into and remain in slavery. But this is where the book really shines. Slavery isn’t propagated by making people want to be slaves or lost desire for freedom. No, slavery thrives on making people sacrifice themselves for the “good” (continued existence and/or health) of those they love. The life of a slave is a life of selfless sacrifice, not for the sake of the master, but so as not to cost everyone else their lives. Dana could have easily ended the horror of slavery for herself, but the cost would have been the lives of Sarah and Carrie and Nigel and a number of the other slaves she grew to know and love.

In addition, Dana had the extra concern of making sure her ancestors lived long enough to produce the next generation. It makes for an interesting, yet never ending “I want to kill him, but I can’t because then I won’t be born” dynamic. Pretty tense stuff.

It is Dana’s husband, Kevin, though, who really makes the story what it is. His arc shows just how easy it is for someone at either end of the master-slave dynamic to fall into his/her role. In this way, Kindred is frightening in is realism and in the subtlety in which those roles manifest. A creature’s natural instinct is to preserve itself, and sometimes that means committing oneself to either end of abuse.

In the prologue, we learn that the ending of Kindred will not be pretty. It was, however, perfect. just like the rest of the novel.

A+